


realignment

by MistressKat



Category: Mission: Impossible (Movies)
Genre: Community: smallfandomfest, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Injuries, Pre-Slash, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-28
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-04 11:08:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24968722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MistressKat/pseuds/MistressKat
Summary: He’s not sure what it is about this case, this moment, this particular occasion of caretaking that makes it feel more… significant. Nothing is really different; they’ve had shitty luck on the field before, they’ve patched each other up several times. Maybe it’s a cumulative effect. It certainly feels like they’re on a precipice of something here, as if they’ve reached a tipping point and are just teetering on the knife edge of it before the inevitable fall.
Relationships: William Brandt/Ethan Hunt
Comments: 13
Kudos: 57
Collections: Small Fandoms Fest





	realignment

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TarlanX (Tarlan)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tarlan/gifts).



> Written for Round 27 of Small Fandom Fest for tarlanx’s prompt of _"Looking after each other in the aftermath of a tough mission"_ left way back in 2015... Uh, surprise gift?! :D I may have stretched the definition of 'tough' a bit. And maybe also 'each other' although I would argue that Ethan letting Will take care of him _is_ Ethan taking care of Will.
> 
> Thank you to HanHathma for SPAG check <3

“Almost there,” Will murmurs, hauling Ethan closer as they cross the deserted street at half-run. Or as close to it as Ethan is currently capable of. 

“It’s fine,” he says. “I’m fine.” There’s a tight laceration of pain in his voice though and he grunts under his breath when Will spins them sharply around a corner. 

Will is under no illusion that whatever he’s hearing is only because Ethan is _letting_ him, because he trusts Will enough not to hide his hurt beyond token protests. Sometime soon, when they are not in immediate danger, and neither of them is actively bleeding, Will is going to sit down and examine the meaning of that properly. 

But first he needs to get them off the street. 

“That’s it,” Ethan says as they take one final turn. “Just… Leave me here while you scope it out.” He’s already lowering himself to the ground behind a bike shelter and Will reluctantly lets him go. 

Ethan is right; someone needs to check if the safehouse is actually safe, and out of the two of them Will is the one without a gunshot wound in his thigh. There’s no reason to suspect the location has been compromised, but neither had there been any suggestion that the source they’d met earlier had a trigger-happy assassin boyfriend so… Will would rather not deal with any more surprises today. 

He does a quick circuit of the block and then swings over the back fence of the neighbouring garden and from there over a brick wall to the garden belonging to the safehouse itself. The townhouse is dark and looks unoccupied, and the key and the code pad it opens are where he would expect to find them. Everything appears to be in order, but Will still enters gun first, pausing to let his eyes adjust to the deeper darkness of the house before doing a quick but efficient sweep of every room. 

He finds nothing but nondescript furniture and a kitchen stocked with tins and packets. 

Will exhales in relief. It’s about time something goes right on this mission. It’s been a cluster-fuck so far, with poor intelligence, Benji kidnapped for three whole days before they got him back, Jane so deep with their target that they couldn’t risk contacting her even to help with the operation. Ethan and Will have been running point for days, exhausted and increasingly jittery. And just when they'd thought they got a break with a reliable source… _Bam_. Neck deep in shit again.

The only consolation there was that their source had been as surprised as they were by his boyfriends’s actions, so at least they hadn’t been actively betrayed.

They’d still lost the lead though, as their informant and his asshole boyfriend had scattered to the wind in the five seconds Will had taken to see just how badly Ethan was hurt. 

It would take some time to track them down and in the none too distant future Will was going to have words with someone from the analytics, but right now he has more immediate priorities. He tucks his gun back into its holster and retraces his steps to go get Ethan.

It’s only been maybe fifteen minutes, but it feels like hours since he left Ethan and there’s an irrational fear squirming at the bottom of stomach. He has to force himself not to hurry, keeping his pace casual. When he’s back around the front he whistles a slow, descending trill of ‘all clear’. 

Three seconds of heart-stopping silence and then an answering call loosens the band of dread around Will’s chest. 

Ethan is already standing up, one hand gripping the side of the bike shed for support, another tight around his own thigh, the jeans dark and wet with blood. 

Will bites down the reproach and instead slips his arm around Ethan’s waist again, gratified when the other man leans on him readily enough. They limp-walk around the block, even though the front steps are right there. The additional distance must be torture, but Ethan doesn’t protest. Will reckons he too prefers alive and hurting over dead and pain free. 

There’s an actual back gate though so Ethan doesn’t have to do any climbing. He could, Will thinks, if he had to, but they are both grateful to avoid that. 

Once inside the house, Will steers them toward the sofa and gently deposits Ethan onto it. Then he does another circuit of the rooms, checking locks and entry points, scanning for listening devices or hidden cameras as he goes. They don’t talk, and Will doesn’t turn on any lights, not until he’s hundred percent certain they are alone and unobserved. 

When he finally returns to Ethan and clicks on one of the sidelamps, it reveals the sallow tint of Ethan’s face, and the fine sheen of sweat covering his forehead. His eyes are half lidded but they are tracking. 

“You with me?” Will asks anyway, leaning close. He tips Ethan’s head back and to the side, pressing two fingers to his pulse point. It’s fast, but not worryingly so. 

“Yeah.” Ethan’s voice is thick, and when he nods the stubble on his chin drags right over the back of Will’s hand. “I’m with you.”

“ _Good_ ,” Will says. It comes out with more emotion than he intended, and he tries to cover it with a brusque “Let’s make sure it stays like that.”

Ethan nods again and Will only realises he’s still practically cupping his face when the edge of Ethan’s jaw dips into his hand. He clamps down viciously on the instinct to snatch his hand back, knowing just how telling that would be, and instead withdraws it slowly. 

“I’m going to find the first-aid kit,” Will says and doesn’t wait for Ethan’s answer. 

There’s no actual searching involved. Each safehouse stores its first-aid kits – plural, for obvious reasons – in two places; in the bottom middle cupboard in the kitchen, and under the bathroom sink. The former is closer, but Will chooses to get the one from the bathroom instead. It gives him extra thirty seconds by himself and he spends them by staring at his own reflection in the mirror, white-knuckling the edge of the sink while he absently notes that his own skin doesn’t look much healthier than Ethan’s. 

When he gets back to the lounge, Ethan is undoing his belt. 

Something about the sight of it – Ethan sprawled gracelessly over the sofa, the soft, golden light casting his body in half-shadow as he pulls the end of the belt free from its buckle – hits Will like a punch to the gut. It’s not sexual, not really – though that is there too, simmering somewhere below the surface – just the emotional impact of it, the raw vulnerability of seeing Ethan like this, of Ethan _allowing_ himself to be seen like this, leaves Will winded. 

Ethan knows he’s watching, but it’s not until he actually looks up that Will startles back into motion. 

“Gonna need help with the rest,” Ethan says, thumbing the top button of his jeans open. 

“Yeah.” Will walks over, kneels by the sofa. “Need to clean the wound.”

They’re both stating the obvious but there’s a certain comfort in it, something familiar to cling to while Will pushes Ethan’s hands out of the way and takes over the business of unbuttoning his jeans, gently tucking them down. 

“Lift,” Will says and Ethan does, visibly gritting his teeth and only using one of his legs to brace himself as he shoves his hips up just long enough for Will pull the jeans from under his ass. 

“Let me.” Will grabs Ethan’s ankle and pulls off shoes and socks, and then finally peels the jeans completely off, leaving Ethan in nothing but black boxer briefs and a t-shirt. He must have shrugged out of his jacket while Will was getting the first-aid kit and it lies crumpled on the sofa next to him.

Will hisses in sympathy as he takes a first proper look at the gunshot wound. It’s thankfully only a graze, albeit a deep enough to bleed copiously, situated about halfway up and on the outside of his thigh. A few inches in the wrong direction and they would be dealing with a shattered bone, or a ruptured artery. 

“Could’ve been worse,” Ethan comments. He’s still a bit breathless from the effort of undressing and there’s a definite blue tint to his lips. 

“If it had been, we would’ve known about it by now.” For one, they would be having a very different conversation and they would be having it in a hospital because no way would Will have risked Ethan’s life for the sake of maintaining their cover, especially as it already seems to be blown to smithereens. “Still needs stitches though.”

Ethan nods. Will doesn’t waste time. He opens the first-aid kit and finds the blister pack of painkillers and another of broad-spectrum antibiotics and pops out two of each, straight onto Ethan’s palm. Thankfully, he doesn’t protest, only takes the meds and lets Will hold the bottle of water for him while he swallows. He could – and has, on too many occasions – do this without anything to take the edge off, but there’s no need for it this time. 

Will pulls on a pair of disposable gloves and then cleans Ethan’s thigh slowly and methodically, giving the meds time to kick in. His skin is warm under Will’s fingers, already starting to turn angry pink from the setting inflammation. Hopefully, the meds will work otherwise they’ll have to risk the local hospital anyway, considering extraction is unlikely for a while yet. 

When there’s no putting off the inevitable, Will lays out the suture kit and glances up to check that Ethan is aware of what’s coming, getting an almost imperceptible nod in acknowledgement. There’s a local anaesthetic among the supplies and Will administers it too, Ethan’s muscles briefly tensing when the needle pierces the skin but then growing lax as the drug takes effect. 

He gives it a few more minutes during which they pass the water bottle back and forth, too exhausted to really talk. Eventually, Will deems it safe to proceed, somewhat surprised that Ethan hasn’t hurried him along once, seemingly content to accept Will’s judgement on this.

He looks up occasionally while he works and Ethan’s eyes are mostly closed, but sometimes they’re trained on Will, watching him steadily. Will meets his gaze every time, unflinching. He’s not sure what it is about this case, this moment, this particular occasion of caretaking that makes it feel more… significant. Nothing is really different; they’ve had shitty luck on the field before, they’ve patched each other up several times. Maybe it’s a cumulative effect. It certainly feels like they’re on a precipice of something here, as if they’ve reached a tipping point and are just teetering on the knife edge of it before the inevitable fall.

When he’s done, Will cleans the wound once more, wiping disinfectant around the neat row of knots before taping a bandage over them. He sits back on his heels and pulls off the gloves, dropping them unceremoniously to the floor next to the open first-aid kit. Tidying up can wait until the morning. 

Right now, they need to rest. Ethan looks like he’s asleep already, if not for the sliver of eye still visible. 

“Come on,” Will says, pushing to his feet. He stumbles a little, the day catching up with him, and has to brace himself on the sofa arm. “You can’t sleep here. Your neck will never forgive you. Or me, for that matter.”

“Slept in worse places,” Ethan mutters, but he’s already reaching for Will, hooking an arm around his shoulders and letting himself be hauled up. 

“Yeah, well,” Will says, leading them down the hallway. “There are actual beds here so no need to tough it out tonight.” 

He nudges open the door to the first bedroom, not bothering to turn on the light, simply lowering Ethan to the edge of the bed. 

“Be right back,” he says, and goes to get Ethan’s jacket, shoes and gun. The jeans are a lost cause, but there is a duffel bag of plain clothing in the cupboard and Will grabs a pair of black cargo pants that look like they won’t immediately fall off Ethan’s skinny legs. 

He returns to the bedroom and dumps everything on the floor by the bed. The house seems secure but better safe than sorry and he knows both of them would prefer to greet any unexpected visitors with their guns and pants within easy reach. 

Ethan has managed to pull back the covers enough to almost crawl under them but accepts Will’s help in lifting his leg into the bed with a grateful grunt. 

“Okay,” Will says, blinking in the semi-darkness. “You all set?” There’s just enough light spilling from the hallway to make out the outline of Ethan’s face, the little quirk of a smile that pulls the corner of his mouth up. 

“Yeah. Thanks.” He reaches for Will’s hand, squeezes it once. Twice. And then just… Doesn’t let go. 

Will’s tired enough to sway on his feet, exhaustion making his thoughts slow and eyes gritty, but even so he’s not stupid. 

Truth be told, he’s not even surprised. 

“Okay, yeah,” he murmurs, toeing off his shoes. 

Satisfied that Will is getting the message, Ethan releases his grip, watching Will skim out of his own jeans before rounding the bed to climb into it from the other side. The mattress dips under their combined weight, causing them both to roll toward the middle. Ethan only hums, a low satisfied sound that winds its way around Will’s heart while under the covers their legs tangle, Ethan’s hand coming to settle over Will’s side, Will’s arm snaking around Ethan’s shoulders to pull him even closer.

Ethan’s mouth brushes over the side of Will’s neck, light enough to be accidental but too slow to be nothing of the kind, raising goose bumps in its awake. In the morning, Will thinks he’s going to do something more about it than just shiver, but right now they are both too tired. 

Right now, they are safe and warm, Ethan’s breathing already slowing towards sleep, his body growing heavy, tucked against Will’s like he belongs there. And maybe he does. 

Maybe they both do. Maybe it’s just taken them until now to acknowledge it.

And that’s okay, Will thinks, closing his eyes. They weren’t ready before. 

They are now. 

Sleep comes swiftly, deep and, for once, entirely dreamless. 


End file.
